Effect of strain rate and temperature on hot workability and flow behaviour of duplex stainless steel

The flow behaviour and processing map of a duplex stainless steel were studied via hot compressive tests in a temperature range of 1223-1473 K and a strain rate range of 0.01-30 s(-1). The effect of strain rate and temperature on the hot workability, strain partitioning and dominant flow behaviour of the alloy was systematically investigated. It is found that the softening mechanism of each constituent phase differs from each other. The ferrite is softened by dynamic recovery and continuous dynamic recrystallisation (CDRX), while the austenite is softened only by the limited discontinuous dynamic recrystallisation (DDRX). At lower strain rates (0.01 and 0.1 s(-1)), the strain is mainly accommodated by ferrite due to its excellent softening capability, which causes the apparent activation energy Q(p) to decline continuously with the increase in true strain. In this case, plastic deformation of the austenite rarely occurs, and at this time, DDRX of austenite is not observed. When the strain rate increases, CDRX of ferrite is weakened at a relative low temperature, which prompts the strain transfer into austenite and induces the strain hardening due to its restricted softening. Accordingly, interactions between the strain hardening in austenite and weakened softening of ferrite leads to one or more platforms of Q formed at the medium stage of deformation (1-30 s(-1)). The processing map shows that two flow instability regions appear at high strain rate due to the lack of sufficient response time for dynamic restoration at the early deformation stage. As the strain increases, dynamic softening mechanism is activated at a higher temperature, resulting in a gradually narrowed flow instability region. Differently, a decrease in temperature suppresses dynamic softening of the alloy with a high strain rate, which deteriorates the hot workability of the alloy and induces microcrack formation after straining of 0.8.